Hardware Engineering

# Beyond the Classroom: Education in an Intelligent Age Join us for the next session of Deeptech Futures, a monthly series from UCL Engineering, supported by AlbionVC and Cooley LLP, and hosted at IDEALondon. ​This time, we’re exploring **Beyond the Classroom: Education in an Intelligent Age**. As emerging technologies such as AI and VR move further into classrooms, universities, training environments, and online learning platforms, the question is no longer just what these tools can do, but how they should be designed, adopted, and evaluated. ​From AI-supported teaching to immersive learning environments, education is becoming a major testbed for how new technologies shape human development. What does it take for these tools to improve learning outcomes, widen access, and support teachers, rather than simply adding another layer of complexity? ​**What you'll get out of it** * ​Hear from researchers and founders working at the intersection of education, emerging technology, and real-world implementation * ​Understand how AI and VR are being applied across learning environments, from universities to digital platforms * ​Explore what makes new education technologies genuinely useful, usable, and evidence-based * ​Gain insight into the design, access, and adoption challenges shaping the next era of education ​**Speakers** * ​**John Mitchell** – Head of Department and Professor of Communication Systems Engineering, Co-Director, Centre for Engineering Education, UCL Engineering * ​**Benoit Wirz** – Founding Partner, Brighteye VC * ​**Stephen Hilton** – Professor of Chemistry and Enabling Technologies, UCL School of Pharmacy * ​**Rajeshwari Iyer** – Founder, sAInaptic * ​Moderator: Dr Rob Thompson, Vice-Dean (Enterprise), UCL Engineering ​**About the series** ​Deeptech Futures: Conversations at the edge of what's possible, supported by AlbionVC and Cooley LLP, opens the door between research excellence at UCL Engineering and London’s innovation ecosystem at IDEALondon. Each month we explore new themes, from robotics and XR to climate tech and health, designed to spark debate, share insights, and connect people who might just build the next big thing together. ​**About UCL Engineering** ​With ten departments spanning activity from cybersecurity to biofuels, synthetic tissues to international trade, UCL Engineering is one of the most diverse Engineering faculties in Europe. As part of UCL, London’s Global University, it crosses boundaries to work with other disciplines, universities, and cultures. ​**About IDEALondon** ​IDEALondon is UCL Engineering’s home for ambitious founders in the heart of Shoreditch, run by WilbeLAB. We bring together startups in AI, biotech, fintech, climate, and more, giving founders workspace, community, and direct access to London’s deep-tech and investor network. ​**Privacy Notice** ​We occasionally take photos/videos at the event for marketing and socials. As part of attending, your contact details may be shared with our event partners (UCL Engineering, AlbionVC, and Cooley LLP). ​If you’d prefer not to have your details shared or photos/videos taken, email **[idealondon@wilbelab.com](mailto:idealondon@wilbelab.com)**.

AI assistants are getting more capable. The question is how we build effective workflows around them. At DevDay London, [Lucy Joyce](https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucy-joyce-597485166/), [Ash Shakrani](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ash-shakrani/) and [Arun Kurian](https://www.linkedin.com/in/arun-mathew-kurian-39b8aa5a/) will explore harness engineering through the lens of a payment integration. From requirements and design through to implementation, they’ll demonstrate why context alone isn’t enough for successful AI-assisted development. Drawing on real-world experience, they’ll show how engineering harnesses, reusable context, standards, and validation workflows help teams move beyond experimentation and build reliable, scalable AI-assisted development practices. **This session will unpack:** 🎯 Why “more context” isn’t the answer on its own 🎯 What engineering harnesses are and how they create reliable feedback loops 🎯 How standards, workflows, and validation reduce AI-generated rework and technical debt 🎯 Practical techniques teams can adopt immediately to improve AI outcomes 🗓️ **Save the Date:** 25th June, 2026 📍 **Location:** Sahaj Software, 1 Quality Court, London, WC2A 1HR 🕕 **Time:** 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM (BST) The evening will feature: 🎤 **One engaging talk** with Q&A 🤝 **Plenty of time for networking** over free pizza and non-alcoholic drinks Don’t miss this chance to learn, connect, and share with fellow tech enthusiasts. 👉 Please click the link below to register. https://sahaj.ai/events/harness-engineering-in-practice-from-requirements-to-implementation/

\> This group has a new home\. \[Luma → [https://luma.com/ldn_software_guild](https://luma.com/ldn_software_guild)]([https://luma.com/ldn_software_guild](https://luma.com/ldn_software_guild) ) **About the London Software Guild** ​The London Software Guild gathers developers, architects, and teams across London who care deeply about the craft of building great software. No fluff, no vendor pitches — just people who take the work seriously, sharing what they've learned the hard way. *** ## ​**Talk:** Dimming the Lights ​**Abstract:** Lessons from the front lines of transforming our enterprise SDLC into a dark factory. We'll talk about quick wins, surprising sticking points, the unsolved problems of orchestration and validation, and controlled experiments and challenges that you can try with your team. ## ​**🎤 Speaker:** Macey Baker, Community Engineer at @Tessl ​**Bio:** As Tessl's Founding Community Engineer, Macey Baker is busy helping to build the future of AI-native development (and helping you build it too). Now an AI code generation obsessive, she got her start as an early employee at tech unicorn Intercom in San Francisco, before jumping the pond and roaming the London startup scene, working primarily in big data / ML houses. Some of her best friends are LLMs. *** ## ​Talk: Secrets in Plain Sight ​**Abstract**: Your AI assistant needs to understand your code, but your model provider doesn't need to know your credentials. We'll explore a novel guardrail architecture that lets models reason about sensitive data they never actually see — preserving full performance without the leak. We'll cover the design philosophy, the tradeoffs, and why context-aware approaches outperform blanket redaction. ## ​**🎤** Speaker: Daniel Trugman, Co-founder and CTO at Requesty ​Requesty is building a novel AI Gateway that provides a complete control plane for any AI use case. The team at Requesty is building innovative solutions that solve the problems of tomorrow for AI trailblazers.

**We are excited to invite you to our summer edition of DSL!** 💫 DSL #16 will happen on 25 June, organised by YLD and sponsored by NewDay. Our Eventbrite tickets are now sold out, but you can join our waitlist [here](https://dsl16.eventbrite.co.uk/). More information coming soon. Thank you to [YLD](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/design-systems-london-16-tickets-1989211510175?aff=oddtdtcreator) for organising and [NewDay](https://www.newday.co.uk/ "https://www.newday.co.uk/") for sponsoring this event. **Who are NewDay** At NewDay, their business is focused on a single, clear and defining purpose: to help people move forward with credit. NewDay provides nearly 5 million customers with responsible access to credit, underpinned by best-in-class customer service and exceptional user experience. Their in-house, highly scalable digital platform alongside their proprietary credit decisioning capability unlocks the competitive advantage. Their broad credit product offering enables instalment finance, BNPL, 0% finance and carded and digital revolving credit. NewDay operates multiple direct-to-consumer products and a range of credit solutions with some of the UK’s most loved brands. Their underwriting capability and experience allow them to responsibly say yes to more UK customers making them a merchant partner of choice. NewDay partners to harness the power of data to drive commerce across the UK, creating value at scale. **Who are YLD?** YLD turns digital investments into results by building what matters, delivering with impact, and making sure it lasts. Their product design, tech, and change experts work as one, applying AI where it shortens the path to value. With design at the heart, YLD brings clarity, puts users first, and shapes solutions that succeed from the start. YLD is hiring - check out the [job page](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/design-systems-london-16-tickets-1989211510175?aff=oddtdtcreator) Join the conversation on [LinkedIn](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/design-systems-london-16-tickets-1989211510175?aff=oddtdtcreator)

AI agents are getting better at writing software. That doesn’t mean the software is getting better. As AI systems become more autonomous, engineering teams face a different set of problems: unreliable outputs, untestable workflows, evaluation bottlenecks, and legacy systems that weren’t designed for any of this. At this Future Form session, we’re looking at what happens when agentic systems collide with production engineering reality. **Speakers:** **Ning Lu, VP, Aladdin Financial Engineering, BlackRock** Ning explores the evolving landscape of LLM evaluation. From static benchmarks to LLM-as-judge systems and agent trajectory review, he’ll break down how engineering teams can evaluate systems that don’t behave deterministically. **Katie Roberts, Technical Director & AI Native Specialist, Nearform** Katie will show how AI-native engineering can be applied inside mature brownfield systems. Using patterns like the Strangler Fig approach, she’ll explore how to isolate risk, generate tests for undocumented code, and evolve legacy architectures without full rewrites. If you’re working with AI agents, legacy systems, or production engineering workflows, this session is for you. Pizza, drinks, and practical AI insights included.

**Please note this is an online event. If you want to attend in person, please RSVP to our [In-Person Event.](https://www.meetup.com/producttank-london/events/315211795/?utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=share-btn_savedevents_share_modal&utm_source=link&utm_version=v2&member_id=347816072)** **\-\-\-\-\-\-\-** The "Product Manager" has never fit one mould, and AI is pulling the seams apart faster than ever. The consulting PM with the polished decks, the big tech PM optimising a metric three layers deep, the engineer-turned-PM still half in the codebase—these archetypes shape how we hire, coach, and judge PMs, but they were always more caricature than craft. This month we put them on the table and ask what's still true. Our speakers share their own journeys and talk candidly about how the role is shifting as AI moves from a roadmap item to a collaborator in the work itself. Expect honest stories over tidy frameworks, and a real look at how the role mutates depending on where you sit. **Our speakers:** [Kiran Virdee](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kvirdee/) \- Head of Product @ Accenture UK [Stephen Down](https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-down-3b824146/) \- Senior Product Manager @ Channel 4 [Valeria Stromtsova](https://www.linkedin.com/in/lerastromtsova/) \- Product Owner @ myenergi As always we will close our meet-up with a candid discussion and Q&A. This event is sponsored by Accenture UK. **Location:** Link to be shared soon **Timings:** 7:00 - Talk starts / streaming starts 8:00 - Q&A 8:30 - Q&A Finish 9:00 - Close Please note that the event will also be live-streamed on our YouTube channel and images will be taken throughout the evening. To keep up-to-date with our upcoming talks, follow our [LinkedIn page](https://www.linkedin.com/company/producttanklondon) and our [YouTube channel.](https://www.youtube.com/c/MindtheProductTV) \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-

Most people still use AI like a search box: type one question, get one answer, repeat. But the next step is AI agents: systems that can take a goal, break it into steps, use tools, remember context, and produce useful work for a human to review. In this beginner-friendly session, we’ll demystify what AI agents actually are — without hype or jargon. We’ll walk through practical examples of how agents can help with research, planning, writing, coding, operations, and personal productivity. We’ll cover: * What makes an AI “agent” instead of just a chatbot * How agents break tasks into steps * Where agents are genuinely useful today * Where they fail, hallucinate, or need human review * How to design simple AI workflows for your own work * A live demo of an AI agent-style workflow from start to finish No coding experience required. This is for anyone who wants to understand where AI tools are going and how to use them more effectively right now. LOGISTICS AND PARKING: The talk starts at 7:00 PM. The first half hour is reserved for everyone to get set up and mingle. Free pizza and drinks! The cheapest parking option is to find street parking, which will only cost you a few bucks. Otherwise, park in the nearby veteran's museum lot for $8. It's highly recommended you avoid the nearby $15 garage parking.

**Important time note:** Please plan on arriving between 5:30 and 6:00 as the elevators lock after 6 and you'll need to message us and we'll need to come get you. The building address is 4450 Bridge Park The entrance is 6620 Mooney St, Suite 400 You will need to scan your ID at the door to get a visitor badge. **Abstract** *Customize the IDE: Building Extensions for Visual Studio Code* Visual Studio Code is one of the most widely used development environments today, and much of its flexibility comes from its extension ecosystem. Extensions allow developers to customize the editor with new features, integrations, and workflow improvements tailored to their needs. In this session, we’ll cover what extensions are and the different types available, including full extensions written in TypeScript or JavaScript, along with lighter-weight extensions such as color themes, language packs, language support, code snippets, and keymaps. We’ll also look at practical reasons a developer might create an extension, from automating repetitive tasks to adding custom tooling. The session includes a hands-on walkthrough of creating a new extension, testing it locally, and understanding the basic project structure. We’ll close with a brief overview of how extensions are packaged and published to the Visual Studio Marketplace and other distribution options. **YouTube Link** TBD

**Improving Office in Franklinton** Physical location: Improving Office 330 Rush Alley Suite #150 Columbus, OH 43215 Schedule: 6:00 p.m.: Socialize, eat, and drink. Improving will be providing pizza and beverages. 6:30 to 8:00 pm. Main meeting and presentation(s). Topic: This month Chris Pazsint will be talking about Agentic Coding. How does one use CLI Based Agents, and Agentic IDEs such as Cursor, Kiro, Antigravity? How to include agentic coding plugins for IDEs you already love such as Visual Studio Code. We meet on the last Monday of each Month. Presentations are given by members and friends of this group. If you would like to do a presentation (small or large) on a python topic, please contact Central OH Python at centralohpython@gmail.com

Christians in Tech is a community at the intersection of faith and technology. Our meetups are designed to spark meaningful conversations, promote knowledge sharing, and encourage growth—both in your career and your spiritual walk with God. Whether you're an experienced professional or just starting your tech journey, CIT welcomes you. Our Website [https://linktr.ee/citcbus](https://linktr.ee/citcbus) Sponsors and Partners * Improving (Venue Sponsor) * Bethel World Prayer Center (Fiscal Sponsor) * Fruits & Roots (Coffee Partner)

Our monthly PHP meetup. A virtual shindig courtesy of Zoom. Check back here for the details around 6:15 pm